Original German Street View images, removed on request

18
Jun/090
Google Inc. is willing to concede to German demands the company erase photos for its panoramic mapping service after they have been processed, a data protection official said Wednesday.
Johannes Caspar, the head of the Hamburg regional office for data protection, said Google had agreed to erase the raw footage of faces, house numbers, license plates and individuals in Germany who have told authorities they do not want their information used in the service.
In other countries, like the US, Google does blur the faces and license plates and so on in the output seen on the website – but they’re still keeping that unblurred photo internally. The crucial difference here is that in that case, the government (if laws permit it etc.) could ask Google for certain content, and Google may be handing it out to them. (Whether that would be that bad after all – it’s usually stuff taken in perfectly public spaces anyway – is yet another discussion.)
Should this catch on then there’s a couple of downsides to this from Google’s perspective. For one thing, Google can’t fully reprocess the blurred parts, e.g. should they find a better way to blur faces or license plates. Plus, in the future they can’t fully check on aggregate data of blurred parts, say to calculate the amount of Dutch cars driving around in Hamburg. However, the original photos are only going to be erased on user request, as the AP says, so that probably won’t make a big difference overall.

Hamburg’s data protection commissioner Johannes Caspar, demanded Google give a written guarantee that the Street View service comply with German privacy laws by 10 AM yesterday (Wednesday, 17th June 2009).

Google has now agreed to erase the raw footage of faces, house numbers, license plates and individuals in Germany who have told authorities they do not want their information used in the service. Said footage will only be erased once processed.

This move will prevent German authorities gaining access to the original photographs on demand and will prevent Google using the images for other purposes.

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Street View Data Retention

12
Jun/090

Members of the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party have requested Google “make a few additional modifications to address local specificities to ensure Street View better aligns to local interpretations of privacy requirements across the whole of Europe.” It has been asked that the original “unblurred” images only be kept for as long as necessary. Google has suggested this will affect the quality of Google Maps, admitly using weak arguments in the face of privacy advocates:

it’d be pretty annoying if you couldn’t find the phone number of that little deli across town where you think you might have left your purse, because our software mistook the phone number for a license plate.

Google’s latest article refers to a statement issued when the service was originally launched. It explains that US law regarding “public spaces” differs wildly to the rest of the world. With the focus now on data retention, it will be interested to note the results. It may open the door for more “public space” data acquisitions, and subsequent retentions, on a street near you.

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